


a dozen dead rabbits

by thefudge



Category: Fargo (2014)
Genre: F/M, Gore, Women In Power, fucked up dynamics, young femme fatale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-19
Updated: 2015-11-19
Packaged: 2018-05-02 10:28:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5244899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefudge/pseuds/thefudge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You with me, Red Man?" A retelling of season 2, with Hanzee and Simone as partners in crime.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a dozen dead rabbits

_"You with me, Red Man?"_

_The air leaves her mouth in a cloud of steam._

_He cocks his gun and pulls the trigger._

* * *

 

Simone combs his hair.

He never allows anyone else to touch it. It took him a long time to let her, too. A lot of baby-steps were involved. Every year, she'd get a bit closer to that straight, black screen and every year he'd push her away.

Until he didn't. Until she finally laid her hands on him. Now, she's combing slowly, precisely. You wouldn't be able to trace affection in the correct movement of the hairbrush, but it's _her_ hairbrush. The one she uses on her own unruly locks. There's a sweet blond hair stuck somewhere in the black mane. Just as there's a dark strand buried in her scalp. 

"Either Uncle Bear loses his head, or Dad will. One of 'em is gonna whack the other. And Grandma's just going to watch." Simone pauses, hand on her hip. "I guess that's genius."

Hanzee turns an inch towards her, and her brush almost scratches his ear.

"I mean, she gets rid of both of 'em, and all she has to do is let them fight like dogs. Works for me."

Hanzee leans back. "Not good enough." 

Simone used to cry from anger, and her baby cheeks would grow pink and puffy every time Hanzee spoke in syllables to her. She couldn't understand why he didn't like her. Everyone loved Simone! 

But then she learned that he used around ten syllables with her, and only three with others. And she felt better. 

Now, she chuckles. "Yeah. Wishful thinking, huh? We need...what's it called. Learned it in school." She muses for a long time. She can do that with him. He has patience. He will wait for her. "An agent, an external agent."

Hanzee bends down and smooths a wrinkle from his jeans. His knuckles brush against his knee, and Simone reads his meaning perfectly. He's sadly on the inside. They need a catalyst. And they can only find that out in the dirty, cheating world. 

She sighs wistfully as she untangles the knots from his split-ends. She likes to take a fistful of hair and work on it savagely, all the while making sure he doesn't feel a thing. Still, he can hear her aggression. 

He likes it.

She doesn't know how she knows. Letting her comb him, that's okay. He's got nothing to say about that. But when she pulls the knots loose, he arches his back a little.

And she feels really good. 

* * *

 

"His name's Mike. He offered to buy me a shake. I didn't say no, even if I don't really like that stuff. Bad for the hips and all. He's a talker. Could recite a bunch of German poetry to me, like I care. You know, these people really piss me off, Red Man. They think we're dumb or something. And they gotta educate us with _European_ culture. America's full of that."

He passes the smoke from his lips to hers. When they first started sharing cigarettes, she got all excited thinking about her mouth where Hanzee's mouth had been. But that was years ago. She's grown-up. She doesn't care about that stuff anymore. But she dips out her tongue from time to time. She can't help it.

"Don't tell me this guy learned all that bullshit out of some weird funk. Like he woke up one day and felt he should read up on Shakespeare. No. He _had_ to, right? He had to so they wouldn't call him...well, you know. I mean, I'm not talking about race. But it's obvious he's got a chip on his shoulder. Which is sad, because the world we live in. It's not worth it. It's fucked up." 

She gets so riled up when she talks about these important things. They're so important to her, although she can't really sum them up, can't really name them. But they matter.

"Anything else?" he asks, dragging on the cigarette. It's not something Dodd would demand with a clenched fist. He doesn't sound tired of her voice, but Hanzee never sounds like anything and she loves that about him. He's so pure. Fuck, she wants to be that pure. She looks at the cigarette and the graceful way he's holding it and she smiles. 

"Weeell," she drawls, putting on that husky voice she learned from Anne Bancroft, "he thinks I was really impressed. He thinks he's got me hooked."

She scratches a bit of paint off her nails and blows. The tiny blue glitter vanishes like diamonds. And then she looks up, because Hanzee just asked something.

"Huh?"

"Does he?" 

"Does he what?"

Red Man just stares at her through the smoke. 

Simone coughs it away. She loves smoking, but she really hates this fucking smoke. "Anyway, he's kind of like a mercenary. He works for the Kansas Mafia, but not really? He said he's "freelance" . I swear, guy could sell water to the ocean."

Hanzee takes the cigarette from her lips and twists it slowly between thumb and forefinger. He doesn't crush the paper, he just sort of turns it into a fine, brown paste. His fingers are black. 

Simone places a tremulous hand over his fingers. 

"I don't want to have to sleep with him."

The ash, hot and grainy, soothes her. He brushes one finger over the hood of her palm. And then, he presses the finger down until he can touch bone.

Simone winces. "Hurts."

"Did he say it?" _  
_

She laughs. "No one _says_ it, Hanzee. He just kinda mentioned I can drop by his hotel room. Cuz that's where he's staying. He didn't tell me the name, said he'd have one of those queer-o brothers drive me up there. Anyway, it'd be good if I went. I know it would. But I don't wanna."

Red Man nods and presses his finger down again, hard, so hard she really shrieks this time. "Owww. Stop it!"

"You have to go."

She wants to cry, but she's in it too. In fact, she came up with most of it. Or maybe he really did put thoughts into her head. That's what they say about Indians. 

In any case, you can't waste a good external agent.

* * *

 

The Gerhardts don't like young people. In their family, the kids are negligible quantity, important only as legacy and emotional tether. If little Rye splits his lip, Momma will fix him and kiss him. But if little Rye wants a helping of power, Momma will not even see him there.

So, it does hit them on the side when they learn Rye is really dead, but the first reaction is to talk about the family, and how this affects the older. Is there a vacancy that needs to be filled? And who gets to kill the killer?

Simone feels sad in an abstract way. Rye used to give her lollipops when she was little, and not the cheap kind. He used to swing her around by the arms and toss her into the cold snow in the middle of winter. She really liked that. He used to pee in the snow. And he'd let her do it too and promise he wouldn't tell. She would draw bears and birds, all yellow and soggy. But she'd have to move around a lot while she did that, because she didn't have a man's trunk. It was a real danger, peeing as a girl. 

Rye had been fun.  A little kooky, but then you'd have to be. She was pretty sure Dodd had once stuck his finger up his ass. Yeah, she knows how it sounds. But Rye had told her once, while drunk, that Dodd liked to strip him naked from the waist down and whip him good when he got out of line. That was no secret. He'd do it to Uncle Bear too. He didn't care who got it, as long as he was watching your knees shake. But apparently this one time, he slapped Rye with an open palm and his fingers had stretched across that red bottom and down into his asshole. 

Simone feels like honoring Rye's memory. So, first time she has to sleep with Mike, she sticks her finger up his ass. It feels like retribution. 

His eyes widen while he's on top of her. She thinks maybe she can flip him. Maybe she can catch him off-guard and ride him, cuz it'll make this whole thing easier, but he just pins her down and stares at her like something's caught on fire - and she has to admit, in that light, he looks ferocious and fucking hot. So she really sticks her finger in, really pushes it _all_ in, and he moans like a bull and fucks her to extinction. 

It mostly hurts, but just like when she's untangling Hanzee's knots, there's an element of passion in it. 

He says, later, that she should never do that again. 

Simone tries to shrug off his words as she smokes, lying upside down on the sheets, but he leans forward with an ivory smile, and kicks her out of bed with his elbow. 

She lands on the floor with an empty thud and doesn't even _believe_ in the first few seconds that she has hit the ground. But his boot lands next to her head and the clack wakes her up.

"Get on up darling."

* * *

 

"So that butcher, huh? Really killed Rye?" 

She applies concealer under her eye and evens it out with her finger. The same finger she slipped inside Mike. She wants to put it in her mouth, but she gets an overwhelming need to throw up and she bends down and spits in the trash can. 

"Yeah."

"I heard Grandma wants him dead by midnight or something."

Hanzee is sitting on her bed. She blushes in the mirror. She wonders if he'll lie down. Could she come sit next to him and they could do it like when she was a tiny baby girl? Well, no, that was a bit something else. Dodd made him sleep on the floor next to her bed because they'd had a fight with a Nebraska clan and no one was safe. But hey, it's not safe now either. Can't he do that for her?

She twists around. "You won't do it, though, will you? You won't kill him."

"Give me a good reason."

"I ain't got one. But look, hear me out. Dad and Uncle Bear and their men need a kicker. Dodd's already smelling me. He's asking questions where I've been and who with. He's been...pretty fucking _much_. If he finds out about Mike, he'll kill me. So we need to give them this butcher and let them do their work. Okay?"

Hanzee walks over to her dressing table. Grandpa Otto bought it for Grandma Floyd from New York, but it ended up in her hands. Simone is good with possessions. 

He parts her hair on the side and inspects her fresh bruise. The latest marks are not so visible. She explains to him quickly that Dodd didn't even strike her that hard. He's weak, he's got no brute strength. 

Hanzee forces her to sit straight. He palms her collarbones, he palms her shoulder blades. He doesn't press down, like normal. Maybe he feels pity. 

She grits her teeth. "Stop doing that." 

"What else?" he asks, keeping his hand at the base of her neck.

Simone's eyes are mean and hard. "He said I'm a whore like my mom and, you know, the usual. Said whores have a really short life-span and if I keep wearing make-up and dressing up like this, someone will take a bat to my teeth and shove my brains in. So yeah, don't kill that stupid butcher yet."

She can feel tears smarting her eyelashes and she doesn't understand where this downpour of emotion is coming from. A second ago she was thinking about dinner and catching _Happy Days_ on TV, and now she's all about words and accusations and just plain sadness. 

Hanzee takes a wad of cotton from the dresser and she thinks, for a moment, he will wipe her tears. But he only squeezes some concealer on the wad and covers the bruise on her shoulder. 

* * *

 

He sleeps on the floor that night. Next to her bed. 

Somewhere in the middle of it, as she's tossing and turning and sweating up the sheets, he whispers from below, "He dies."

 _He dies, he dies_. A little ditty. Such a strange thing to say. She wonders, in dreams, what this present death can mean. He _didn't_ die. He _won't_ die. No. He _dies_. Does he die forever? 

She fears he's talking about the butcher. She hopes it's Dodd. 

* * *

 

There are things the Gerhardts know in their bones and can't accept, like the fact that their extinction was planned by God a long time ago.

When Simone was ten, she saw a dozen dead rabbits floating up river. She never knew what had happened to them, where they'd come from. Just these furry white things with long ears, floating like angels. 

She'd drawn them several times, a long procession of water graves. Her mom said she could try drawing something nicer. 

"Are they going to heaven?" she'd ask to indulge her, and Simone wouldn't know what to answer, because angels came from heaven, but as for going _back_...what would be the point?

Then she saw Hanzee kill rabbits in the forest. She ran up to him happily. The mystery was solved. " _You_ put all those rabbits in the river."

The Red Man said nothing. Simone was sure he was responsible, so she sat all afternoon, watching him, trying to catch him in the act.

To her great disappointment, he threw the rabbit in the fire, not water. He cooked it and ate it. And he gave her the crunchy legs to chew on. 

She thanked him nicely, but the mystery was now bigger than ever.

"But the wet rabbits. Who did that?"

Hanzee told her to eat and shut up. She never found out. 

* * *

 

Well, sometimes you don't find out. Sometimes you tell yourself a story. That it was you. You killed them and didn't cook them. Didn't eat those fuckers. They're not worth eating. You set them to waste. 

She draws the family tree. She draws lines and figures and rows of graves. She makes a little map on the paper. This is where the river flows. 

She calls Mike Milligan and tells him her father and her uncle are gone to Fargo to kill the butcher and his wife and whoever else they have to, to get Charlie out of jail. She tells him to find her "good-for-nothing asshole dad" (her words exactly) and kill him. 

Then she walks out to the shed. Hanzee's peeling vegetables in a bucket.

"I told them the men are away. So they're gonna come here for us. Best get ready." 

He jerks his head to the side, to a pile of weapons. 

She wets her lips. "It's time." 

Simone knows Hanzee never trembles, never shakes, never wavers. But there's a soft little tremor in his shoulders. It's been a long time coming. 

"You told the guys what they have to do? I mean, cuz I don't know if this will work, so I'm asking you. I'm trusting you," she says, softly, because she _is_ afraid, although she's decided to set them to waste.

Red Man stops whatever he's doing. He kicks the bucket to the side and the onions go rolling on the floor. 

She thinks he'll pull the knife to her throat but he drops that too, grabs her face and brings it close to his. 

"He dies."

Present, eternal death.

* * *

 

When he counts the cars, Dodd realizes they're just _five_ fucking people. Where are the rest? What's happened? They were supposed to be at least fifteen. He's already here, he can't turn back home to ask for his men. He'll have to make-do with these, but if Ma is responsible for this, she'll catch her death. He won't ask her nicely anymore. He'll smash her head against the porch, he will.

* * *

 

Simone wears a fur coat for the occasion, but her Grandma disapproves. 

"You have to start wearing clothes that show who you are in this family. You're a Gerhardt woman. And you're no longer a piece of jewelry. That stupid dressing table your Grandpa got me. That's not what we're for. This is our time.  You have to learn to be a leader. It's _our_ time."

"Yes, Grandma.  I promise. Promise I'll do better."

She kisses her on the cheek one last time, and leaves the house in her own car. Halfway down the road, Hanzee hops in and she switches sides with him. She's a better driver, but his hands won't shake. 

They wait under a tree. 

Slowly, the Gerhardt cars appear down the road. Hanzee did his job. Dodd was abandoned in Fargo. Ha. She can picture that bulldog face, twisted in rage like a used napkin.

There's gonna be a bloody dance, and Simone turns on the radio.  _The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one, he said...._  
  
She taps her fingers on the headboard and tries to remember the lyrics. They're both so tense, she can feel Hanzee's muscles under his jacket. But she sings. She has to sing, to give the impression that she's a leader now, like Grandma said. 

They hear the gunshots from this far. 

Simone leans into him and turns the radio up. For the first time since she can remember, he puts his hand around her waist.

They've done everything right. Maybe there's no God, but there's an order out there, in the universe. And that order has to reward those who wait. She hopes that's the case. But maybe she doesn't. Maybe she hopes it all goes wrong and they have to run. Her and Hanzee. 

_Yes, the chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one but still they come!_

* * *

 

They've always sneered, she and him, at this little microcosm, this piece of homeland. Now it's bathed in grimy blood and she can't help but wonder if they always hated it because they belong here so much. Can they ever look at this and feel nothing?

Grandma Floyd is dead too, but her death is easier to bear. Old coot. She says she'll protect you, but she sleeps like a fucking poison ivy, coiled around that bag of bones. Grandpa Otto is dead too. 

Mike Milligan is still barely alive, dragging himself across the yard. The magical thing about him, what she's always secretly liked about him, is that even in this bad state, he's looking ready to talk you out of drinking. He tips his fingers to his chin and smiles a battered, frightened smile. 

"You...you're smart for a blonde." 

Simone smiles back, sadly. These are his last words? Funny. She was expecting, I don't know, Mark Twain.

The rest of the Kansas men are dead. And only two Gerhardt men are still standing. 

Hanzee shoots one directly. Then he tells the other, "Good?"

The man kneels, not out of obedience, but because he's too tired to die. 

* * *

 

Their last stop is Fargo. Every last stop is Fargo, it seems. Hanzee didn't want her to come with him.  Said he could handle this one alone.

"There's five of them."

"I know them," is his only reply. But Simone has to honor Grandma's promise. She's shot guns before, mostly because someone had to watch over Charlie while the poor kid tried to learn how to hold one straight. She feels sorry for him, but he has to go too. You have to clean the whole branch, not just a leaf here and there. And Uncle Bear's son probably has the sickness too. She wonders if Dodd ever stuck his finger in him. He must have. Family tradition. 

She doesn't turn on the radio this time, but she thanks the universal order. She used to wear crystals and light incense. It was something hip at the time. She should start again. Right after she cleans this gory mess from her fur and boots. 

They stop right outside of town. Usually, the glorious, triumphant fuck happens post-mortem. But he opens his arm, and she slides over to him. She sits on top of him. She can feel the wheel biting into her back.

"For strength," he murmurs against her lips, and Simone's heart goes wild. She's always been a very romantic girl, even though maybe the latest events don't prove it. And she's always known Hanzee is romantic too.

That's a lie, but it could be true. When he grips the back of her head it feels nice, it doesn't feel like he wants to pull her teeth out the back. 

She wants to hear him say, "I've always wanted you, "you're my dream", but if Red Man knows any of this _Love Story_ crap, he's only said it to a hooker in Vietnam, probably.

He kisses her and she zips down his jeans and it feels pretty normal. It was a lot harder, a lot more beautiful, when they were just looking at each other from afar, absorbing each other's essence. Now that they're touching for good and she can feel his manhood in her palm, it's like coming down from heaven. Angels don't go back there. What would be the point?

When she rides him, she has the satisfaction there's no pinning. He doesn't grunt, but he does squeeze her in all the right places and the best part is he lets her lean her forehead against his and she can smell his rancid breath and that sort of turns her on. 

"Hanz..." she breathes. "I'm dying."

She meant to say _I'm coming_. But she's got it messed up. With all the deaths going 'round, her grandparents cold and the whole microcosm blown to pieces, it really feels like she's about to go too.

He grabs a fistful of her hair, the way she does when she combs his hair, and he comes too. 

After that, she sits back down in her seat and cleans herself up in the mirror. She realizes she'll never like him. She loves him like herself, like the reflection in the dressing table. The Red Man is always going to be hers, but she doesn't really want him. That's what makes him hers.

* * *

 

They're lucky again. The order takes care of them tonight. There used to be magical nights like this in the past, when the Magi hunted for the star in the sky, the star of Jesus. Two of Dodd's men died at the butcher's house. It doesn't take a long time to wipe out the last Gerhardts.

It is what it is. God had a plan for their extinction from the start, but did they listen?

A dozen white rabbits she's sending out to the river. 

Dodd sees Hanzee out in the street, outside the Blomquist house, and he barks orders in a rage. "Get your ass down here! Bring the car 'round, I gotta find the others. What the fuck is my daughter doing here? Oh, sweetheart, the whipping you're getting at home will be a dream!"

"There's no home anymore," she replies. 

"Shut that bitch up and throw her in the car. Hanzee! Do you want to test me tonight?"

Simone looks at her beautiful man. She will never touch him again, but he will stay with her forever.

"You with me, Red Man?"

The air leaves her mouth in a cloud of steam. 

He cocks his gun and pulls the trigger.

* * *

 

She makes a pretty sweet deal with Kansas City, all things considered. Mainly, they think the pretty girl whose fathers are murderers was caught in the haywire and she hid with the Indian, because that's the American way. She hands over the business, they give her a share and baptize her as one of their own.  She'll take over the Gerhardt fortune, of course, with the help of their associates. But it's a good thing that young, innocent blood is taking charge. This one won't do as the men did. This one isn't a mother either. She won't love her children more than she loves the business.

There's the thing with the Indian. What about him? He's dangerous.

"Hanzee would die for me," she says simply. "If I told him right now to shoot himself in the mouth, he would." 

He will one day. He does.

**Author's Note:**

> this came out of me in one go, because my girl Simone and my boy, Hanzee, deserve the world.


End file.
